Pizza Corner’s secret ingredients

At Pizza Corner, a pizza is made in the kitchen, travels by road, but is delivered through the use of innovative technology. Rahul Neel Mani quickly tells you how (in the time it will take you to eat one)

Pizza Corner is a believer in outsourcing because the company prefers to focus on its core business of making pizzas rather than IT, says VENKATA SUBRAMANIAN

CAN you guess what it takes for a pizza to reach your home? You make a phone call, and the delivery boy rings your doorbell within the stipulated time. If you think it’s as simple as that you are highly mistaken. Today, pizzas may be made in the kitchen but they are delivered using technology. Indeed, the delivery of a pizza is almost as technology-driven as a modern automobile. The scale, size, and methodology of using IT may be different, but the objectives are the same—to deliver a good product in time and to service customers better.

We are talking about Pizza Corner, which is using technology for delivering pizzas. The first Pizza Corner outlet in Chennai was commissioned in 1997. The company has three different models of business: the dining model, where one can dine at the outlet itself; the delivery model, which consists of 40 percent of Pizza Corner’s business; and the takeaway model, wherein the customer walks into an outlet and takes away the pizza. In the delivery model, Pizza Corner offers the ‘39 minutes delivery’ guarantee (within a particular radius) or a free pizza if a delivery is not made in time. Before doing anything, the company does a geographical mapping of the area where a Pizza Corner outlet is located. Based on this mapping, the delivery zones are decided.

Delivery model

To support this scale of operations, IT hardware, software and all other critical applications should be up and running at all times. It is also essential that both voice and data communications are uncompromised. To ensure this, Pizza Corner uses leased line infrastructure to connect its core locations—Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore—to each other. These leased lines are backed by a dial-up network. There are four call centres in these four cities. Each city has one hunting toll-free number. For example, Delhi has the number 2601 1111. Whenever this hunting number is called, the call lands up at the guest call centre (GCC) at Savitri Nagar in New Delhi. This call is processed in the point of sale (POS) software (put on an HP server) by one of the call centre executives. The server is connected to 15 nodes manned by 15 call centre executives. If the customer location falls under Pizza Corner’s delivery map, the call is taken to the next level. The database, in which customer details are entered, has built-in intelligence. If the customer has called in the past, it will show all his details just by filling any field e.g. name, phone number, etc.

Once the order is taken, it is fed in the executive’s machine. One of the PCs in Pizza Corner is used as a router. This PC is fitted with a multiport card which does the job of a router. All the six stores in Delhi (Pizza Outlets) are connected to the GCC, and all the call centres across India are connected through a 64 Kbps leased line based on MTNL’s MLDN (Managed Leased Data Network) solution. The MLDN system has been introduced to improve the performance of leased circuits, and the results are showing at Pizza Corner. Says Venkata Subramanian, chief general manager, IT & Development, Pizza Corner, “Earlier, if there were problems with leased circuits, the service provider took his own time to fix it. But with MLDN, maintenance is easy and there is rarely any downtime.” Additionally, Pizza Corner is using a two-wire point-to-point leased line of 4800 Bps capacity for its operattions in south India.

But let’s return to what happens after an order is punched in. The punched order is automatically routed to the PC that is connected to the Multiport card modem. The outlets also have a small LAN with a couple of desktops connected to the server. Every PC has a specific role. For example, there is a PC dedicated to taking orders from the GCC. Another PC is for deliveries; delivery personnel punch the order in that PC. All this data is recorded in the database. The router intelligently notifies the orders, even if it is an advance order. “Once the order is ready and the delivery boy goes out to deliver, the GCC gets an update that the order has left the store. In case the customer calls up to find out the status of the delivery, we can tell him around what time he would receive it,” says Subramanian. In case of system failures, all stores and the GCC are equipped with radio sets. So apart from dial-up, this is another level of redundancy. This procedure has been followed ever since Pizza Corner started deliveries. “Technology is enabling us to deliver pizzas within the promised time frames. It’s not a big deal to give a pizza free, but at the end of the day we don’t want to compromise

on our reputation,” says Subramanian. Once their man delivers a pizza and comes back to the store, he punches in the delivery time. It helps in tracking the average delivery time in a particular area.

VPN for voice

There is yet another unique use of technology at Pizza Corner. All its major regional offices need to communicate with each other through voice for business reasons. This results in huge data and communication costs. “The primary objective for the VPN solution at Pizza Corner was to bring down the long-distance telephony cost. Additionally, it also gave us the advantages of low maintenance cost, secure connectivity and faster voice and data transfer,” says Subramanian. VPN subscribers can have practically all the facilities of an electronic PABX without owning it by becoming a member of the VPN service offered by MTNL. It has none of the maintenance hassles inherent in PABX systems. There is no need for VPN subscribers to take up leased lines between their business locations, which frees them from the problems associated with leased lines. Pizza Corner claims to be the first company to use VPN for such a unique purpose. “The best thing about it is that we haven’t spent anything on the hardware. Also, it gives us additional technological benefits, which come as a package,” says Subramanian. MTNL provides connectivity to the four area office locations. The solution has come at a very cheap price. The registration charges are Rs 3,000, and for up to 16 extensions the company has to pay just Rs 490 per extension. “So we pay Rs 3,000 + Rs 4,410 (9 x Rs 490) per month, which is lower than STD bills,” says Subramanian. One just has to dial 1601 11 followed by the PNP (private number plan) – 01 to 09. As of now we don’t have a heavy volume of voice traffic, so this option seems to be working fine. In future, when volumes grows, we may think of investing in our own infrastructure,” says Subramanian.

Audio meeting

For immediate IT troubleshooting and other business decisions, Pizza Corner also uses ‘Meet Express,’ an audio conferencing facility provided by yet another service provider. “We can better fulfil any business or IT objective collectively rather than in isolation. This was the main reason why we have adopted audio conferencing technology,” explains Subramanian.

Belief in outsourcing

The beauty of this small network is that all the IT needs of Pizza Corner are outsourced to third-party providers. “We believe in using technology. In our kind of set-up, we can’t go in for capital expenditure, and more so in times when technology is changing so fast. Thus, we believe in outsourcing. An Annual Maintenance Contract is the order of the day for Pizza Corner,” says Subramanian. He calls it business acumen—to focus on the core business instead of getting into each and every aspect of IT.

Future

Presently, Pizza Corner has a very fragmented IT infrastructure. Subramanian feels that integration is the next step that his company has to think about. Thus, there are plans to integrate the islands of information and software packages into one robust and consolidated ERP package. The company expects to achieve better control, and enhance productivity and decision-making through this. “Discussions and evaluations are going on. We are looking for a customised solution that will meet our needs. If everything goes well, this will be up and running within this calendar year,” concludes Subramanian.

rahul@expresscomputeronline.com